Federal Election Commission Approves White Oak Technologies Plan to Offer Advanced System for Contributor Data Analysis
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In an Advisory Opinion issued today, the commissioners of the Federal Election Commission authorized White Oak Technologies, Inc. (WOTI) to market its package of data mining software and services to political campaigns and committees. Employing advanced Artificial Intelligence techniques, WOTI's CampaignMiner system analyzes databases to identify hidden patterns of collaboration among people or organizations.

Applied to their own contributor databases, the system helps campaigns and committees enhance fundraising yields by identifying previously unknown individuals or groups of givers that influence others' political contributions. Applied to the national FEC contributor database, CampaignMiner helps campaigns find otherwise undiscoverable patterns of regulatory violations in contributions to opposition campaigns.

Previous FEC and court decisions had found other vendors' services to violate FEC regulations prohibiting commercial use or resale of contributor data. But, in its decision today, the Commission sanctioned WOTI's approach of delivering licensed technology and professional services to organizations that independently obtain contributor data.

Reacting to the FEC decision, WOTI President Alan J. Broder said: "Fortune 500 companies have long benefited from the competitive intelligence that comes from exploiting cutting-edge Data Mining technologies. We are extremely gratified that the Commissioners have empowered the public and the political world to reap the benefits of enhanced scrutiny of the political process."

WOTI can be reached at info@woti.com